00:00We got a call at 2.30 in the morning that our 19-year-old son had been
00:03I was completely terrified. When we got here, we heard he had been in the face.
00:07I was woken up by a phone call, and when I saw Dominic's girlfriend's name,
00:11I knew something was going to be bad. I couldn't understand her or anything
00:14because I was just already in a panic mode, and she had said that Dominic had been
00:17QQ'd or whatever. He had driven in the middle of the night to do some sort of meeting.
00:21When he arrived at his location, that's when everything went down.
00:25Every parent fears that one phone call. Unfortunately, it's not their last one.
00:30We get to the hospital, had my sister go ahead of us. When we arrived,
00:34and all I can see is that beautiful face. I just was imagining the worst.
00:38Is he going to have a face? What is he going to look like?
00:40We were just devastated, and the doctor calls Tim on the phone.
00:43When Dominic came in, he was giving your phone number.
00:45This is the number one thing. Dominic always puts my phone number.
00:49I told him, if it's ever really, really bad, give your dad's number.
00:52He gave his dad the number. The surgeon comes out to talk to us,
00:55and it just gets worse from there.
00:56What they hear next is devastating.
00:59Dominic is in probably one of the longest surgeries today.
01:02They have to reconstruct his face. There's part of his face that is not protecting the brain,
01:08and so they have to take bone the front of his skull off.
01:11If it needs to be repaired, they're going to take part of his skull from the back and put it
01:14there,
01:15and then secure it all and rebuild his face.
01:17He went into surgery close to 8 a.m. this morning, and he will be in there 12 hours or
01:22more.
01:22They have the OR scheduled for him until 1 a.m., but hopefully it doesn't take that long.
01:27Things took a turn when he woke up.
01:30He took Dominic's tube out of his mouth yesterday.
01:33He was able to talk. He actually didn't stop talking all day long,
01:36and just being silly in himself, but then having no one's of being really afraid.
01:39Last night was really rough.
01:40We had to spend hours trying to calm him enough to sleep.
01:44He was afraid that if he woke up, he wasn't going to be alive anymore,
01:47or he was afraid of his safety.
01:48And so we spent, like, a ton of time praying over him, anointing him,
01:52praying worship to go to him.
01:54My husband and I did not get much sleep.
01:55After excruciating hours of waiting and worrying, it was time to finally see Dom.
02:01Thank you for your thoughts and prayers and all your energy.
02:04I really appreciate everything that you guys have been sending to me.
02:08I've been feeling it all, and I've been accepting it all.
02:11Thankful for the positivity and the praise of you, God.
02:13The nurses and everybody have just been so amazed with how miraculous his healing has been
02:18and how fast it has been, and we're just so happy.
02:21He's been able to get up out of bed. He's been able to go to the bathroom.
02:24We're hoping we can get out of the hospital soon. He'll go to a rehab facility.
02:27You would think it's a miracle after seeing the final results.
02:30All here was completely fractured.
02:32One of the pellets went through right here, and he has, like, no eyelashes right there because of it.
02:37Caused a damage to this eye, damaged his optic nerve.
02:40They took and they did a scar all the way across an incision.
02:43They pulled this all down, and then they used bone from his skull and rebuilt all of this area.
02:49When he does x-rays and stuff, though, it looks like pepper all through there
02:53because there are still all the little, like, pieces and things.
02:56Dom's inspiring recovery shared with his strong mother's perseverance
02:59should be a lesson to anyone on what a loving family truly looks like.
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